


It is okay to feel the world.

by androginny



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 5 Times, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, and happy about people growing into themselves, this is honestly just me being lame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 13:10:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11647227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/androginny/pseuds/androginny
Summary: ‘Well at the very least I look forwards to being the Best Uncle Ever, Hols- Adam,’ Bitty says, ‘Kids aren’t really part of my plan and they’re damn well not going to happen by accident!’And he might be a few weeks into his sophomore year, but the ability to talk like this still thrills him a little. He can say things that might imply he wants to have sex with other men! And it’s not a big deal! Everyone around him treats this as if it were about as scandalous as apple in a pie. Bitty love, love, loves this place.Five times Bitty didn't want to have kids and one time he did.(title from Adult Mom's Told Ya So)





	It is okay to feel the world.

(1)

With the flatbed of the truck finally, thankfully, fully packed they were only a few minutes away from the start of the long drive north. His bedroom, whose far wall he could see through the window from the front of the house, was barren enough to warrant the classification of ‘childhood bedroom.’ Fancy him having a ‘childhood bedroom’ instead of just a regular old bedroom. Eric was giddy with the implications of it. Deliciously, he thought of how soon he was going to be able to say things like ‘My parents live in Madison’ with a degree of distance.

He felt the weight of mother’s gaze on his back, and was unsurprised to see her eyes swimming in not yet shed tears. This really was the moment he’d been imagining ever since he’d first allowed himself to think of getting out of Georgia, of Going Away To College. The magnitude of this realization started a laugh out of him.

‘Don’t you dare be laughing at your old Mama for crying as a time like this, Eric Richard.’

Stepping up to the back of the truck, and ducking his head down under the pretense of checking the knot he’d just finished, Eric supresses the giggle he feels rising and tries to protest that that had not been his intention. It’s half-hearted at best, and quickly he abandons it in favour of sweeping her up in a hug. 

‘Honey, I’m excited for you, but this just all happened so fast. I coulda sworn you were just a baby yesterday,’ She mumbles into his shoulder, ‘And you gotta know how strange Coach and I are going to find having an empty nest. Well at least until there are grandchildren – though I suppose it’s a little too early to be planning for that.’

Eric stiffened as she released him from their embrace. His mother’s casual insistence at him having children annoyed him well enough; but the clear excitement she displayed at this assumed inevitability tinged this annoyance with a heavy dose of guilt. 

‘Aw Mama, I’m not so sure I’ll be looking to have those kids ever’ he says, trying for levity in his voice. 

There’s a prickle of irritation under his skin as she laughs sunnily, earlier tears forgotten, and ruffles his hair:

‘You say that now, Dicky,’ she says as she rounds the back of the truck, heading to the passenger seat ‘but just you wait, that’ll change.’

Eric bites back the indignant comment rising in his throat at being treated like such a child. He gets in the car, and turns the key in the ignition, figuring this cross-country moving trip was likely proof enough of his impending adulthood. 

 

(2)

College is going great. It’s going really, surprisingly well, actually, Eric thinks. It’s a little different from how he imagined it to be, but honestly that’s likely for the better. 

Eric had high hopes for Samwell: a liberal school up north, where nobody knew or cared that his daddy was the football coach back home. He was a little intimidated about being on the team: he might have played co-ed hockey in high school, but that wasn’t anywhere near Div I in a part of the world that took it real serious. But as Coach had reminded him – they didn’t give out sports scholarships to folks they didn’t think deserved them. 

The best part, Eric thinks though: the best part is that there are boys on the team that aren’t anything like he thought they would be. And better, because apparently college – or at the very least, Samwell – really is different from high school, these guys are the ones who live in the Haus, and who call the shots.

Currently, he’s sitting on the roof of said Haus with a couple of the guys from the team. Shitty is rhapsodising about something or another, a half-smoked J dangling between his fingers. Eric stopped paying attention a while back – he’s learn in his first few weeks that whatever Shitty said was both almost undoubtedly something he agreed with, if he understood it at all, and also something he could more or less tune out without grave consequence. 

Below them on the front lawn, Holster and Ransom are wrestling on the grass. They’re fake arguing about something unintelligible and laughing as they roll through the grass. 

Johnson, who Eric will admit appears to be the weirdest person on the team he’s hung out with so far, says: ‘The context of casual homoerotism determines so often one’s feelings towards the interaction. If the assumption is that it needs not be explained because it’s impossible for it to hold genuine intention, the reaction towards it may be significantly different from that where the intention is either genuine, or private.’

‘Does that mean you think they’re actually boning?’ Wicks says.

‘I think Johnson is trying to say it’s none of our business, brah’ Shitty replies. 

Olly butts in: ‘Sure, but also if they don’t get together and have a lot of very tall, athletic children, their families are going to be upset.’ 

Eric – or Bitty, as the team has started referring to him – feels weirdly relived at that comment. In a lot of ways, the most unsettling thing about Johnson is how he makes a lot of sense. 

‘Assuming that the only way to honor a relationship is by having children is mad fucked,’ Shitty says, leaning back on the roof. He’s high enough that the comment is really directed at anyone.  
Did Bitty mention that college was amazing?

 

(3)

Bitty’s honestly not sure how he ends up responsible, even temporarily, for this tiny tiny human. Something to do with Holster’s cousin & his wife who were driving through Massachusetts and decided to make an impromptu stop. Forty-five minutes ago, Bitty had been minding his own business in the Haus kitchen, and now he has a four-month-old baby in his arms. 

He’s too busy cooing at Emilia as she blinks owlishly up at him to notice when the conversation dies out in favour of Emilia’s parents and Holster watching him. Lardo is doodling on the kitchen table & seems also more or less unaware. 

‘She’s a real cute one you have here,’ Bitty says once he notices. And it’s true as well – while Emilia does look a fair bit alien in the way of all very small infants, she has an adorable button nose, and her dark eyelashes curl upwards, framing her brown eyes.

‘You’re good with her,’ Holster’s cousin (Mark?) remarks, with a nod of approval.

‘Bitty here is going to be the bonafide Best Dad Ever when he gets there,’ Holster declares, with all the same gravity that he often proclaims Lardo the Uncontested Pong Champion at kegsters. 

Bitty’s laugh is a little brittle as he passes the baby back to her mother, who has started to develop the edge of panic present in all young parents should their baby be taken away from them for too long. 

‘Well at the very least I look forwards to being the Best Uncle Ever, Hols- Adam,’ Bitty says, ‘Kids aren’t really part of my plan and they’re damn well not going to happen by accident!’

And he might be a few weeks into his sophomore year, but the ability to talk like this still thrills him a little He can say things that might imply he wants to have sex with other men! And it’s not a big deal! Everyone around him treats this as if it were about as scandalous as apple in a pie. Bitty love, love, loves this place.

‘For real, Bitty?’ Holster says, interrupting his train of thought, ‘No kids? how come?’

As if this was the more shocking part of what he’d just said! 

Before Bitty even began to formulate a response to that, Lardo chimed in ‘Adam, you can’t just ask people why they’re white!’

The ensuing quote off, followed by the exodus of the stray Birkholtz’s caused the whole topic to be quite forgotten by everyone involved. 

 

(4)

‘But they’re my sons!’ a slightly – alright, fine Jack, more than slightly – drunk Bitty exclaimed. 

‘Bittle. Dex is older than you. They’re freshmen in college: you were like this last year too.’ Jack says, but he’s smiling that quiet little smile that Bitty likes to pretend is reserved only for him.  
‘Fine,’ Bitty settles for, and sidesteps the obvious ‘that’s not how you were your first year.’ 

But don’t act like the reason I’m better behaved is anything other than because you’ve convinced me to join you in your old man ways.’

Bittle means it as a light tease, but still watches Jack closely to see how it lands. His brow furrows briefly, but he laughs along: 

‘Don’t tell me you miss those hangovers, Bittle.’

Bitty rolls his eyes, and the movement causes him to catch Derek Nurse falling off – and only barely catching himself – the coffee table that had been pushed to the side of the living room. 

Jack follows his line of vision and chuckles, ‘Bittle, if this is how bad you are with the frogs, you’re going to be something else with your real children. They’re going to be fine, it’s a party.’

Out of habit, but also out of a superstitious fear that questioning this new relaxed Jack would make him disappear, he addresses the first part of the statement only: ‘Oh I’m not having kids.’

‘No?’ Jack says, but it doesn’t feel as probing as it would from anyone else. There’s a cheer from the other side of the room, and Bitty looks up to see Lardo jumping on Ransom’s back. They’re both grinning fiercely, clearly more than a few drinks in. 

‘Do you?’ Bitty says, ‘Want kids that is?’

‘I, uh, didn’t think that far ahead. Didn’t really think I’d make it far enough for that?’ Jack says, quietly and in the same almost-detached tone he uses whenever he says something truly heartbreaking.

‘Oh… honey.’

 

(5)

Bitty is not sure what’s happening with Jack and Camilla Collins, but she spends a lot of time in the Haus kitchen at the moment. Most of the boys have decided that it’s because she and Jack are back together, but Bittle ends up spending a lot of time with both of them at the moment, and they curiously seem to spend very little time together. 

Instead, Cammie spends a lot of time in the kitchen, dicking around with Lardo, or helping Bitty with baking things. Actually, if Bitty hadn’t spent the last year watching Lardo and Shitty circle around each other, he would have guessed that Cammie was here to see Lardo. Actually, at moments like this, when Lardo declared she was about to be late for class and all but ran out of the room, leaving Bitty with a confusingly distressed Camilla, he’s almost sure of it.

‘Ugh, do you ever think about how different your life is turning out from how you planned?’ Camilla asks, thumping her head down on the counter.

‘Well I don’t live in Georgia anymore, so yeah,’ Bitty says drily, though he suspects that’s not really what Camilla was talking about. 

‘I thought I was going to be like, a real estate agent in the suburbs with two kids and a husband,’ she says, ‘but now I’m not even sure I care about monogamy.’

‘I don’t think I ever wanted kids all that bad, but I know what you mean.’

Shitty saunters in and wraps himself around Camilla and leans his chin on top of her head:

‘What’s up my dudes?’

‘Patriarchal capitalist expectations and how we’re rejecting them,’ Camilla replies. 

Bitty thinks that might not have been exactly what he meant but he also knows better than to argue with Cammie and Shitty, who use long words to describe concepts he doesn’t understand. Maybe he’ll sign up for that Feminist and Queer Theory class Nursey is taking next semester after all.

 

(+1)

‘Jack, baby?’ Eric calls from the kitchen where he’s unpacking the groceries Jack has already unloaded from the car. ‘Do you remember when you were at Samwell and we talked about having kids a couple times? I’ve been thinking about that, I think I’ve changed my mind.’

Eric turns back to the doorframe that he’s heard Jack walk through, and then abruptly stop still under. Jack looks caught in headlights, and the kind of scared that reminds Eric of the real early days of them knowing each other. He replays his last statement in his head, confused at this sudden change in Jack’s mood. He’d been in a great mood earlier, and they’d been having a lovely, domestic, quiet day.

‘Oh goodness! Baby, sugar, sweetheart,’ Eric babbles, practically tripping over himself in his haste to clarify, ‘I didn’t mean now, or soon! Or even necessarily together! We’ve been dating for less than a year! I’m in college! And only 21!’

By the time he spits all of this out, Jack’s expression has changed to one of combined confusion and fondness. 

‘Okay,’ Jack says, smiling and leading Eric over to the sofa the in their living space. He waits until Eric has sat down, and settles himself in comfortably, head resting on Eric’s lap & curled up across the remainder of the sofa. He closes his eyes and sighs when Eric runs his hands through Jack’s hair. Eric loves how Jack is with him in private: affectionate and needy and so, so much more vulnerable than Eric would have imagined possible, even in that last year where they were both living in the Haus. He’s so happy right now his heart aches a little. He almost doesn’t want to break the silence with an explanation.

‘Once last year, we talked about not wanting kids. You said something about why you never wanted any –‘

Here Jack interrupts him with his customary bluntness: ‘Because I thought I wouldn’t live long enough, I remember.’

‘Right, well I realized that I had some pretty similar reasons for not ever considering it.’

Jack looks up at his boyfriend with concern, and tries valiantly to keep his eyelids from fluttering even as Eric scritches the short hairs at the nape of Jack’s neck. 

‘Growing up, I didn’t really think I’d ever get something like this,’ Eric starts, and gestures vaguely, ‘Even before I really new I was gay, I think I new there was something different with me. And different is not really an option if you’re a good Georgia boy like me.’

I knew I couldn’t marry Mary-Beth from Sunday school even before I knew why,’ Eric continued, ‘so I think I just shut down that whole potential. Even once I figured out what the older boys on my daddy’s football team had been kicking me around for, I don’t think I ever actually thought it was an option.’

‘And now?’ Jack prompts, his soft, lovely, caring gaze punching a hole somewhere deep and tender in Eric.

‘And now I have this. Never did I think I would get this. If you went up to middle school Eric Bittle and told him he’d be spending the summer with his hockey-player, history-nerd boyfriend ‘n being domestic like we are, he wouldn’t have believed it for anything,’ Eric finishes, smiling down at Jack. And then he adds, with a laugh, ‘And if you’d gone and told him that this boyfriend had the best ass in at least this world and pro’ly the next too, he’d’ve known you were straight lying to him.’

Jack flushes a little at that, and pulls himself up to sit next to Eric. The small part of Eric that hasn’t melted into a puddle of sappy mush causes him to catch his breath a little at the action. Look, he knows Jack is an athlete, obviously, but sometimes his strength still surprises Eric.

Jack’s seems to catch Eric’s train of thought and teases, ‘See something you like, Bits?’

All of Jack’s lines sound like poorly scripted B movies, but somehow, Eric falls for them all the same.

‘Darling… you’re what I never knew I wanted,’ Jack starts. The endearment falls awkward from his mouth, but Jack is insistent on using it on occasion. If Eric is honest, he loves everything about it though: the way his mouth fits around the vowels, the fact that Jack does this for his benefit, and the almost hesitant pause that follows the word: ‘Darling.’

‘And I know you said you didn’t mean us, Bits, but what if I want it to be us - in a few years, once you’re done college and we have a house and a yard somewhere?’ Jack looks younger in his insecurity, now that he’s out and said it. This boy was going to be the death of Eric.

Eric puts a hand to Jack’s chin to stop him from breaking eye contact, and slowly, deliberately climbs into his lap. Frames Jack’s face with his two hands and says, a little breathless, ‘You’ve thought about that? You’d want that? With me?’ 

‘Someday, yeah,’ Jack says.

Eric manages to parrot back ‘okay, someday’ before kissing Jack hard and slow, pressing him back into the couch cushion.

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of notes:  
> Obviously not everyone actually secretly wants kids, or should actually secretly want kids. There are many people who don't and won't ever. That's cool and should be respected.  
> Moreover, I stand by the fact that it's disrespectful and rude to tell people that 'they'll want kids when they're older.'  
> Having said that, I also know so so many gay folks (myself included) who spent years adamant that they didn't want children for a range of reasons: we didn't want the husbands/wives we thought had to come with that and we didn't have any examples of gay parenting around us. And then past that, I was recently at an all-lesbian-dinner party and someone who had recently moved in with her girlfriend talked about how she didn't think she'd ever deserve to have that. (Bitty's speech at the end is somewhat a paraphrase of that.)  
> Parts of how you present changing over time, and what you want changing is really normal & a part of learning and growing. It's also really hard to accept a lot of the time, especially when you feel like you've committed to something & then realize it might not actually be for you. Sometimes it's important to not let stubbornness win out, and to surround yourself with people who don't enjoy saying 'I told you so' as much as they could.
> 
> This is also very poorly self edited & for that I can only apologize. Please feel free to point out any typos/ things I've missed. I'd be more than grateful; I haven't post fic since we were all using FF.net.


End file.
